Carry On
by SorainaSkye
Summary: Winry gets mad a lot, laughs a lot, and cries a lot. Set after the Promised Day, and Winry deals with the aftermath.


Written for FMA Ladyfest.

**Prompt 1 (must include a character from the official list):**Winry Rockbell (+ Pinako Rockbell if you'd like), starting immediately post getting her soul back (i.e., Chapter 104-105). What's that like? Does Winry have nightmares from this experience? And what does she think of waiting for months after this for the brothers to (a) let her know they're okay (b) come home?

Written for SJ Smith, my favorite FMA fanfic author. :) I hope you like it!

This was greatly inspired by the quote you'll see below, and so far has not been betaed as my beta please-knock is waaaaay busy.

DISCLAIMER: Nay! I do not hold the story in mine mind; it is the creation of another: Hiromu Arakawa.

* * *

><p>"Winry gets mad a lot, laughs a lot, and cries a lot." – Hiromu Arakawa<p>

_Pain-hate-rage-fear-save me-scream-help-hurts-hurts-hurts-_

It was like jumping into icy water; the shock of it all froze her body, slowed her mind, and for a moment she didn't remember what had just happened or where she was.

Then the light came, flitting between her eyelids, spreading across her shoulders.

As the darkness faded, she was finally able to breathe.

This, too, would later make her think of water; getting caught underneath the ice on a frozen pond, her body breaking through and the air rushing into her lungs.

Someone choked across the way. "W-Winry-"

_Winry. Winry. I'm Winry._

She was Winry. There was no more pain and screams and fear.

She struggled, pushing herself up on her elbows. Her hands couldn't seem to stop shaking.

"Grandma-" Her voice felt raw. "Grandma-"

She looked up, and all of the breath rushed out of her again. The darkness still surrounded her, like she was in a spotlight. Beyond it, getting louder and louder, were the screams.

The voices. The hate and rage and fear, waiting, pulling closer, the light dimming, and it would pull her in again, pull her in and everything would disappear-

_Grandma-Al-Ed-no-no-no-_

Louder and louder, the sounds filled her ears, filled her body, and she had no heartbeat, no name, she was nothing but sound and screams and _hurt-_

Her own scream tore her throat, eyes flying open, hands struggling to fight off the dark, which wound around her like so many snakes.

"Winry!"

Something touched her, and the voices wouldn't stop, calling to her, beckoning her into the dark, but she couldn't- she'd promised something, and it was important that she fight-

"_Winry!"_

Light flooded her eyes, and she shrank back. She blinked, and a shape took form; three concerned faces. For several moments she couldn't place them, but she took a deep breath, and the shapes alined.

"G-grandma?"

A slight smile broke over her grandmother's tense face. "Yes. You were having a nightmare, Winry."

"Oh." She drew her knees up to her chest, wrapping her arms around them. The sheets felt cool against her sweaty skin.

_Winry. I'm Winry._

There was no darkness reaching out to her, no screaming. Just her grandmother's worried face. Something pressed against her shin, and she looked down, finding Den nuzzling her leg. Winry reached out her hand, gently rubbing the top of her head.

She jumped slightly, feeling her grandmother's hand on her forehead, wiping at the sweat, brushing back her hair. "This is the third day, Winry. If nothing changes soon, we should have you see a doctor. Maybe he can give you something to help you sleep?"

Winry looked at her grandmother's face; the dark circles under her eyes. "You, too," she said softly, and her grandmother started, and then gave a small smile.

Three days; three days since the darkness had come. Since the air had left her lungs, and the screams filled her.

It was more than the voices, more than the darkness. She'd never been afraid of the dark, not even as a child. It was that the darkness and the screams took up everything; she was not Winry, there was no Ed and Al. No automail, no granny, no Resembool. She was everyone and no one, nameless, but also a mother and a daughter, sons and fathers, all rolled into one, and all in pain.

Three days since the promised day. Three days since the collapse of the government; the radio had told them as much, and there had been a brief message saying that Ed and Al were alive, but nothing else. Three days since her bodyguards had been given leave. Three days, and the nightmares plagued her.

"It will be alright, Winry," Her grandmother said, drawing back her hand. She smiled again, and Winry tried to smile back.

"I know." Her words were hardly a whisper. A drop of sweat fell down her face. Den licked at her hand. It was familiar, everything; her room, the bed, her grandmother, but still the fear lingered. It waited in the corners. She turned her eyes away, glancing out the window. It felt like she was always checking, waiting for the brothers to come home.

She knew it would be alright, somehow, but even such knowledge felt empty without assurance to back it up. For all she knew, the military could be lying to her. Maybe the homunculi were regrouping, and maybe soon the dark would steal her away again.

Her hands were shaking again, and she took a deep breath.

"Here," Granny pulled the sheets up, tucking it gently around her. Winry fell back against the bed without thinking, for a moment back in time, when her hands had been small and stories were read each night. Den leapt up on the bed, bending her legs and nestling herself beside Winry's thigh.

Granny didn't reach to turn off the lamp, and the shadows under her eyes seemed even deeper.

Her brain felt fuzzy; and for a few moments she forgot about the fear, sitting in the warm and quiet, Den's even breathing at her side. Her grandmother dragged over a chair and sat at her side, like nights when she'd been sick and scared as a child.

Before the world faded, she could just make out the image of her grandmother scooting closer to the light, and away from the dark.

Her nightmares didn't go away, of course. Some nights she felt as if she never slept, constant fears waiting for when she closed her eyes, and other times she never remembered waking from dreams at all.

Sometimes she wanted to yell at Ed and Al for not calling them, for leaving at all and being in danger. When she saw how Granny seemed to always have a drink in her hand, how the shadows under her eyes deepened, looking like bruises, the fury grew.

Damn apple pies and promises! She was terrified of shadows and dreams and sounds! Her grandmother couldn't sleep and it was harder and harder to concentrate on automail.

Nightmares were supposed to be cured by lying with someone that keeps you safe; as a child it had been her parents, her grandmother, Den, and the brothers. She lost count of all the times they wound up in the other's bed, ready to curl up and just _be_ there, steady and warm.

Singing songs and laughing, drinking warm things and telling stories; the comforts of childhood.

But they weren't children anymore, and getting past the horrors takes more than laughter and stories and blankets tucked in.

By the twefth day, the dreams have still plagued her, but she couldn't say if it is an every night occurance. A few times she woke to her grandmother's cries.

The flowers wither in their vases; meals contain long silences. Lights and candles are left on, and Winry sometimes also dreams of her house burning down like Ed and Al's.

She thinks of the children, of the people she somehow knows were with her in the darkness. Little Elysia Hughes; her stomach clenches at the idea of the girl having half the nightmares Winry does. Panninya, Garfiel, Mr. Domonic, the paper boy and the cabbie, a thousand other people with families and lives and fears.

Murderers, liars, rapists, thieves. She saw a million images of people ripped to pieces and women crying while being beaten, children led off to dark corners and slaughtered. She saw it all in a millisecond, in every second; she saw it without any light or true pictures, saw it and felt it from every side.

She was the crying woman, a fist striking her face.

She was the murderer, wiping her weapon clean.

She was a little boy crying in the night while hunger tore at her insides.

She was a million voices, crying and screaming and pleading: _fucking die-die-die-LEAVE-RUN-hide-help-kill-save me-_

Everyone, and no one.

On the fifteenth day, her grandmother falls asleep while working with automail. The result is a deep scar across her arm that cut into the bone.

The image of Granny, collapsed and bleeding, brings memories of the dreams back full force.

In the end, the damage isn't too bad; stitches and some cream to spread on the wound, but her grandmother is up and about and reaching for alcohol soon enough.

It is then that Winry wonders why it had never registered before. Her grandmother has always drank, always smoked, and it had never really bothered her. Now, the very image is enough to make the world spin because the dark circles are bigger than ever and when Winry looks in the mirror her own face is no different.

Her grandmother tries to not drink so much, tries to sleep, but there is only so much she can do. Only so much Winry can convince her. Some nights it is Winry that sleeps in her grandmother's room, in a chair, watching over her. It is a strange role reversal, one that doesn't really bother her in the end. She is happy to give any comfort, any help, even if it doesn't drive the fears away.

One day she wakes early, and finds herself in the kitchen. Her hands find apples and a knife and pans, and before she knows it she is breaking eggs and making the dough.

The pan is glass; clear, with a slight green tint. She makes the crust, slides in the slippery apples, and gets the oven ready.

No brothers are coming up the road.

Somewhere a little one is terrified of darkness and nightmares and things they cannot understand.

Adults are lying awake; drinking and clinging to each other, or slipping apart.

Winry's arms start to shake, and the pan is heavy and warm and its an apple pie like she promised, but there is no one to eat it with her, no one-

Her arms fly up and she hurls the pan at the ground, a slight cry escaping her; the glass shatters and dough and apples go everywhere, slapping against her legs and toes.

She stands above the mess, staring, shoulders shaking and eyes filling up. She blinked back the tears, because she'd made another promise, too, and no matter how angry she is that still _matters_.

Clattering footsteps find her, and stop suddenly. Winry turns slowly around, seeing her grandmother standing there, eyes wide and mouth slightly open at the sight before her.

"Sorry," Winry said, and she cleared her throat, saying it louder.

For several moments, her grandmother is quiet, and then she steps into the kitchen. "Let's clean this up."

There is no easy solution.

Her grandmother is there for her (and she is there for her grandmother) but even that alone is not enough to make it go away.

It doesn't, really. Go away, that is; not completely. Even as her breath gets easier and her dreams more peaceful, there are always nights that drive her to desperate screams.

Another call comes, and this time its Ed on the phone, speaking and wonderfully alive. He doesn't say much, but says he's had to stay at a hospital for a little while. That he is sorry its taking so long.

_That they are coming home._

There is no word on Al's body, and perhaps that is why the call is so short; either he's keeping it a surprise or he wants to wait to deliver the bad news. She knows that its good, even if half of her can't believe it. Ed is happy, and she can practically feel his grin. The brothers are coming home, but this alone is still on the catalyst for change.

It isn't that she stops looking for Ed and Al, that she stops being angry and sad the longer they are gone. It isn't that she doesn't need them; she does. Like food and water and sleep.

It is just that she has to move and breathe. She has to wait for them, and build automail because there were people who needed her. She has to pet Den and laugh, buy groceries with her grandmother, visit her parent's graves. Think of Mr. Hughes and Scar and the homunculi. Sit at the bedside of her loved ones, and let them sit with her.

The catalyst is not just Den barking and chasing after birds, not just the sight of her grandmother drinking, not just stubbornness. Winry can't pinpoint any one thing that brought them back, that made her sleep again.

Life came through.

The sun came up. Automail was fascinating. Cows and sheep made sounds at the other, and people moved about their day, all of them, despite the pain and fear and sadness. The children grew, remembered brightness and balloons and grass.

She had grown before, and could do it again. So could her grandmother, Ed and Al. They could live, and move and breathe.

It was simple, in the end. The little things, the quiet and the moments. All the words and horrors and happy times rolled into one. The birds and fences, bricks and metal and baking and laundry.

Life, and death. She'd seen both plenty. Patients would die under her care. Loved ones would pass. Those who had lived long lives, and those that had hardly lived at all.

She smiled, because everything would be alright.

Not because there would be no war or tragedies, but because she had so much, and the way life worked she would still gain more, no matter her losses.

People would be born.

The sun would come up.

Babies would cry.

The brothers would come wandering up the road to her.

She would have her mind, her heart. Memories. She would live with her fears, her regrets, her sadness.

Winry would walk forward, to whatever the world would contain. At times despair would swallow her, fear would freeze her very blood.

The happy times would still be there, and more would come, even if it was only in scattered moments.

She had to face it, to live.

That was the most frightening thing of all, really. Living in a world where pain had to exist just as happiness did.

She would do it. Build and love and heal, learn and live.

_Let fury fill her, and tears fall._

_And smile._


End file.
